Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Wounded Healers

A month or so ago
on the internet, I happened onto a recent review of my first book, Uncommon Calling:
A Gay Christian’s Struggle to Serve the Church. While giving credit to my
activism of forty years, the review took me to task for being “self-obsessed”
and, while insisting homophobic people change their ways, failing to confess
things I needed to change in myself other than my shame and lack of pride.

I understand that
people do not read as carefully as they used to, but the book listing under the
genre “biography” as well as the subtitle should warn readers that the book is
intended to be autobiographical. I completed it 25 years ago this summer, and
it came as a result of being asked to tell my story so many times that I
thought I’d save everyone’s time and trouble by telling it in print.

It appeared at a
time in the LGBT movement when many of us thought personal narrative was the
best way to overcome heterosexism. And I was persuaded by Carl Roger’s dictum
that "what is most personal is most universal," as practiced by my spiritual mentor
Henri J. M. Nouwen. Nouwen believed the minister (every Christian) was,
according to a rabbinic story, the wounded healer who unbinds and binds her or
his wounds one at a time, so as to be ready to help others unbind and bind
theirs. It could be said that each of his books on the spiritual life revealed
some personal wound being dressed and addressed in the hopes of helping others
with similar wounds.

Henri once wrote
that the “J. M.” in the middle of his name could stand for “Just Me.” He
believed that the minister (again, every Christian) was called to live a life
offered to others. The autobiography or memoir is said to have first appeared
in The Confessions of Saint Augustine, and spiritual autobiography has long had
a place as a means of doing theology. I lead workshops and retreats on
spiritual autobiographical writing, encouraging participants to tell their
stories.

But I also wanted
to tell the story of one denomination (the Presbyterians) struggling with the
issue of openly gay and lesbian Christians in their pews and pulpits. Recently
preparing my letters from Henri for donation to his archives, I ran across his
advice on an earlier version of the manuscript that I focus on myself rather
than the church—that that’s what readers would want. I chose to tell both
stories, because for me, I was only an example of what LGBT people were
experiencing in every denomination. I dedicated the book “To gays and lesbians
who struggle to keep faith,” by which I meant religious faith as well as faith
in ourselves. The most frequent response I’ve gotten to the book is, “You told
my story,” which is exactly why I wrote it.

As to the
dismissive tone in the review about my need for conversion from shame to
appropriate pride: most LGBT Christians of the era and even today will tell you
that this was the most important transformation we had to make. “Out of the
Closets and Into the Kingdom” was my final paper for professor Letty Russell’s
Liberation Theology course.It meant
giving up self-denigrating, LGBT-denigrating, even suicidal behaviors to
embrace who we are as beloved children of God, citizens of God’s commonwealth.

Throughout the
book, I explain that homophobia is something we all are working on, gay and
straight alike. And when I talk about the need for the church to change, I
tried to put it in “we” language, as I am part of that church and its needed
reformation. That I didn’t feel the need to use the book as a private little
confessional was to save the reader from “too much information,” as well as to
reinforce the purpose of the book: to gain acceptance for LGBT people who
should not be rejected because we also sin. Toward the end of the book, I
wrote, “How can I reject the church for a lack of integrity when I also
struggle to more fully realize this goal? … I’ve abandoned perfection as a
spiritually desirable goal. How can I then require perfection of the church?”

I am not
providing the link to the review because I understand that snarky commentary is
used to draw people to blogs. I notice this when I post something edgy on this
blog, and I try to avoid playing to this. The comments on the review reinforced
this notion—an internet lynch mob was forming, as one wrote that I must be a
young person, part of the “me” generation, and another, noticing my longevity
in the movement, said I was probably one of those self-absorbed boomers of the
60s. Perhaps that’s most disturbing of all, that people who have not read the
book or any of my work feel entitled to form an opinion about it.

Nouwen, whose
reputation grew from his early book, The Wounded Healer, came toward the end of
his life to understand how people can hook us in our wounds, as he describes in
The Inner Voice of Love: “People will constantly try to hook your wounded self.
They will point out your needs, your character defects, your limitations and
sins. That is how they attempt to dismiss what God, through you, is saying to
them.”

Consider me
hooked. But don’t dismiss what we might learn from all this.

+++

Chris will be leading a seminar,Henri Nouwen: The Wounded Healer, February 28-March 3, 2013 for the Spiritual Formation Program of Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia. The public is welcome!

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3 comments:

Needless to say, I thoroughly disagree with your critic. Although I never reviewed "Uncommon Calling", which I read years before Amazon even existed, I consider it one of the several key books in my own pilgrimage. Although my own spiritual memoir has never been published, I believe that it too has served a major purpose in not only helping me personally to heal some of the wounds inflicted by homophobic religious and cultural attitudes, but has also served others with whom I personally shared my reflections. At a Woman Church conference in 1983, I became keenly aware that "telling our stories" is an absolutely essential part of the witness to which God calls us. That is why I now find myself more powerfully drawn to read autobiographies and memoirs than any other type of writing. Thank you again.

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ABOUT CHRIS...

Chris Glaser has a ministry of writing and speaking. Since graduation from Yale Divinity School in 1977, Chris has served in a variety of parish, campus, editorial, and interim posts. He has spoken to hundreds of congregations, campuses, and communities throughout the U.S. and Canada, and published a dozen best-selling books on spirituality, sexuality, vocation, contemplation, scripture, sacrament, theology, marriage, and death.